Until last year, Conventional Wisdom, at least that of Those Who Count, had it that the science was “settled” in favor of AGW. Many on the Left took that to mean that there was an urgent need to repeal the Industrial Revolution & that anyone who objected should be marginalized. No sensible person on the Right agreed with that back-to-the-stone-age lunacy.

And, BTW, no one on the Left lived like he believed in that stone age lunacy.

"Many on the Left took that to mean that there was an urgent need to repeal the Industrial Revolution...."

No.

Those who believe our emissions of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere are contributing to a more rapid warming of the earth than would be occurring otherwise encourage that we find means to lessen or check those emissions such that we may attempt to slow down or stop such warming as may result from human activity. Just as companies that pollute the air and land and water around their physical plants are required by law (where such laws are enacted) to dispose of their effluents safely. They're not asked to shut down their businesses, and no one is suggesting the industrial revolution be repealed.

That's a bit disingenuous, isn't it? The climate doomsdayers didn't want legislation ending a clear and present danger. They wanted a shell game of pollution credits which doesn't solve the problem, but opens up the whole issue to copious amounts of corruption and treasure.

Further, a good deal of the loudest environment criers were not living themselves as if we were all about to flooded out of our Florida beach homes.

Regardless of climate-gate, et al, the whole things has smacked of dishonesty.

I don't dispute that there has been hypocrisy and probably delusion among those advocating for a "greener" earth yet who continue their lives enjoying every modern technological convenience. (I believe this notion of carbon trading has been largely discredited, has it not?)

I merely corrected the mistaken assertion that anyone among those warning of the ecological and climate disasters awaiting us if we do not arrest our profligate emission of greenhouse gasses has advocated we return to a pre-technological or pre-industrial way of life.

Those who believe our emissions of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere are contributing to a more rapid warming of the earth than would be occurring otherwise encourage that we find means to lessen or check those emissions such that we may attempt to slow down or stop such warming as may result from human activity.

Well I know there are people who believe in Santa Claus but I don't take them anymore seriously than I do people who believe in AGW.

We have clean technology that will provide us with the energy we need to maintain our 21st century lifestyle. Its called nuclear power, which the enlightened and progressive French use to supply about 75% of their energy.

Windmills aren't going to supply LA or Chicago with enough energy. Even die hard libtards like garage mahal who decry global warming won't give up his BMW for a Prius and even the Lion of the Senate fought off attempts to put wind farms off Cheasapeke bay.

And as ScottM correctly points out, the AGW movement was all about wealth transfer. You could emit as much carbon as you were willing to pay for it. That's not being Earth's caretaker, that's being a enviro-bookie.

Windmills aren't going to supply LA or Chicago with enough energy. Even die hard libtards like garage mahal who decry global warming won't give up his BMW for a Prius and even the Lion of the Senate fought off attempts to put wind farms off Cheasapeke bay.

Dude, I told you. I drive a 20 year old car! I recycle old cars. My position has always been clear:

1. The earth is warming2. Man is undoubtedly contributing to it. How much we will probably never know.3. There is a finite supply of dino fuels available anyway, therefore we should invest heavily in clean energy. Kills two birds with one stone. I think that is a sensible, moderate position to take.

The view of the Brits from Europe is different than we think. The Brits just despise losing their Empire to the common and rude USA, and that IS the guiding star in their media memes for home consumption. Now that the Obama?Pelosi/Soros government has gotten the UN into the Global warming Scam for the profit of the USA's ruling class and not the Brits ruling class, the BBC and other Brit media are tearing up their own creation. The funny thing is that such news cannot make the list of USA media stories because the One and his gang still plan to hit the Mega Ball Lottery on that Scam of all time.

If we were really serious about clean energy we would focus on nuclear and natural gas. This would allow us to generate the necessary energy to eventually power our automobile fleet on electricity and/or hydrogen. Natural gas could then be phased out as better technologies evolve. The idea that we can leap straight to wind and solor is simply moronic.

Clarkson and the Top Gear crew drove to the North Pole in mid summer in a modified Toyota pickup. It was great. They made a lot of fun of Al Gore and his claims the pole is no longer frozen over in the summer.

2. Man is undoubtedly contributing to it. How much we will probably never know.

Translation: I think we're the problem but I have no way of proving it but just accept it as Gospel.

There is a finite supply of dino fuels available anyway, therefore we should invest heavily in clean energy. Kills two birds with one stone. I think that is a sensible, moderate position to take.

Fine. Right now with present technology nuclear power is the only source that is going to maintain our current standard of living. Period. Now maybe at some point we can tap into that million degree furnace that is the Earth's core but right now, its beyond our reach. Windmalls won't do it either as they constitute about 25% of Holland's energy and they're about 1/50th our size, population.

And to be honest garage, to constantly argue that AGW is real despite the mountain of scandals coming out of East Anglia is the equivalent of those who think Saddam had WMDs and there out there. Somewhere....we know it!

If it was real these guys wouldn't be lying or hiding data. But if you want to keep defending the Cause, be my guest. Humor is in short supply when Trooper isn't here.

They are just modern puritans who have replaced God with the worship of Government. It drives them crazy to think of people living what they consider decadent and sinful lifestyles. Since they don't believe in God and the bible anymore and thus can't use that as an excuse to control other people's lives, they use "earth" and the "environment" and government as the excuse and means.

"That statement would carry more weight in his article if he could cite (some of) the facts that lead him to that conclusion."

And it would carry more weight if it wasn't complete nonsense. Human activitiies is the "prime driver"? Really? Not the sun or volcanos or the oceans but man? Interesting how the earth somehow managed to warm and cool before there was a man on the earth letalone an industrial man.

And what is the point of this guy's article? Even if it is true, so what? Does he think the BBC should fire Clarkson despite his wildly successful show? Actually he probably does. This twit seems to have problem with the concept of free speech and expression.

If the BBC is reporting problems with E Anglia that even al-Guardians own science writers admit are problematic and taking from that that maybe Brits don't need a 45% drop in their too prosperous therefore evil lifestyles - the Guardian has a problem just because it interferes with the overarching narrative.

That only wise government regulators and EU functionaries can save Europe and put it on a moral keel and realize true post-communist progress.

Once al-Guardian commits to a narrative, all inconvenient facts must be dismissed if a pet narrative is threatened.

Similar to how al-Guardian was determined not to let 9/11 or the tube bombings disrupt the narrative of white oppressors, Jamaicans, Hindi, and exemplars of the Religion of Peace all living together in happy multicultural harmony.

I ride a bicycle. And when it's raining or snowing I ride the bus. And my route isn't one of those runs that rattle about with a grandmother or two who only take the bus to keep the driver company, it's a standing-room-only route. And I never exhale.

Hoosier - Fine. Right now with present technology nuclear power is the only source that is going to maintain our current standard of living.

Not true. Nukes are expensive to build and we don't have the capital resources to shift from cheap coal to nukes except on a slow, limited basis. Fusion might "happen", but again, it is also looking like a very capital intensive energy source.

That leaves the path of solving it by addressing overpopulation. Which critics and religious people that want to have their cake and eat it too, call a family of 11 Haitians a "gift to Jesus" and at the same time say all the Haitians need to also have SUVs carrying them to the megachurch from the 5,000 square foot McMansion is "just good hard work and entrepreneurship.

Sustainable earth models that throw out the whole AGW part and are frankly upset with it because carbon mania has diverted all attention away from resource depletion, desertification, water and arable land and wildlife habitat depletion issues say their models show the Earth can sustain 2-3 billion people comfortably.

1,000 nuke plants or 3500 nuke plants running mean nothing if you have 3 billion people in Africa and the ME trying to live on water and arable land adequate for 600 million people long-term.

But limiting population, as China made a great call to do, for example, and the West and Japan did naturally by reduced breeding rates - mean nothing if forcing other nations to do sustainable breeding is condemned as evil, against Jesus or Allah's Will. And reaching ZPG means little if people continue to see the West as morally obligated to take in any "noble refugee" from collapsing, overpopulated parts of the 3rd and 4th Worlds.

Our inevitable descent from our current standard of living has little or nothing to do with any imaginary "leftward lurch toward socialism" or fantasies about "try(ing) to destroy the private sector," especially given that we are ever more in the grip of the plutocrats in the private sector, enriching themselves at our expense.

It does have to do with the transfer of good jobs overseas, leaving us with largely only lower paying service jobs that cannot be offshored; it has to do with the continuing rape of our economy by the banks and financial institutions; it has to do with the fact that much of our current standard of living has long been illusory anyway, founded not on real wealth in people's hands but on credit, on the expectation of money not yet ours but that we expect to have to pay for things we want now; it has to do with the possible collapse of the economy, which is not fixed, merely bandaged; it has to do with the potential of the U.S. Dollar being dropped as the world reserve currency; it has to do with real wages having been on a thirty year decline, with no end in sight; it has to do with our crumbling infrastructure, which is not being repaired; it has to to with the rise in energy costs that will result from the diminishing reserves of cheap fossil fuels; it has to do with our pouring trillions of dollars into the ravenous money pit that is our war budget--money that could be spent on producing and repairing but which is spent on weapons that will either sit unused or that will be used...to kill; it has to do with the possibility that our foreign creditors--China being the largest--may become reluctant to continue lending us all the money we're presently operating on; and so forth.

The arguments stated here in defense of AGW are just false or entirely unproven.

1) The Earth is not warming in any unusual way or rate yet. It has been warmer and CO2 has been much higher. In other words, when industry did not exist the planet experienced the same climate and even warmer all on it's own. This makes it very suspect that industry is responsible. It may be an irresistible notion, but it is not anywhere near indicated by the data.

2) Nobody, even those proposing taking action, have any expectation that anything we can do will make a significant difference. It ain't gonna happen.

3) The supply of fossil fuels available will last economically for hundreds of years, and new ones continue to be discovered. AGW is not a reason to rush to change fuels or destroy economies.

There are other reasons, political, pollution, independence, etc. But AGW is not one of them, unless your religion requires it.

We will continue on just fine, innovating new technologies and becoming "greener" without the hysteria or lining the fear-monger pockets.

That money should go to the people and companies that come up with our best solutions in the future through the market. It will accomplish this better and cheaper, while top down control will fail us as it always has.

"Since they don't believe in God and the bible anymore and thus can't use that as an excuse to control other people's lives, they use 'earth' and the 'environment' and government as the excuse and means."

All true, but my point is - while everyone's following the politics - if we look into that particular kind of rejection of God and the bible (the kind that replaces it with the 'earth' and the 'environment' - as opposed to just straight atheism) we find NewAge/Paganism. It's always the same shit:

Whether we're talking about the inroads of nonsense into science, medicine, religion, or politics, it all comes down to the same source:

The NewAge Movement.

I can't link to them right now (I'm at work) but I've shown that many of the biggest online scientists that fully supported the climate change theory (people like "Orac" from Respectful Insolence) were (at least, former) believers in other forms of woo as well. They just can't let it go, even as they attempt to distance themselves, professionally, from their mindset (cultish thinking/liberal fascism). They've been fooling themselves, before they tried to fool the rest of us, for a long, long time. To the point of delusion.

I agree with Cederford that population is the real problem, but the only known way to fix that is by improving standards of living and human rights. The lowest birth rates are countries with these characteristics.

U.N. directed economic control will accomplish just the opposite. Poorer people and more of them. But the U.N. toadies will get rich in the process of that failure, so it's good for some.

I am a plutocrat over here in the private sector. I am not sure how I am enriching myself at your expense. Can you fill me in? I'm busting it pretty hard over here, working 70 plus hours a week and writing checks to this and that governmental agency and filling out this and that form and listening to my customers complain about the same burdens. How is it, Robert Cook, that I am bothering you, taking something from you or otherwise having anything whatsoever to do with you? Did your mommy and daddy do well by you and make it possible for you to sit around and bleet such nonsense? Or are you tenured and can be smug and sanctimonious about whatever you please? Let me know how I am enriching myself at your silly expense. Please.

Crack...Keep up the good fight. Do you think people like the New Age because it promises them what the find missing in their lives which is a way to control others. We all start with a fallen nature that wants to control others. Did you ever read the first speech given by Jesus," The spirit of the Lord is upon me to proclaim the good news to the poor, He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and to set free the broken hearted..." It sounds like Jesus came out fighting with the same old New Age cults too.

It's just numbers, math, biology and history. The problem with Malthusian was that he was born too early. He had no idea of the potential of technology to overcome population. Now with many times the numbers, and a shared culture, technology is failing to keep up with demand. What he argued has been happening, we just don't care anymore. People are dying massively from disease, warfare, and poverty.

A small planet is fine as long as the population is small or a larger population is nonindustrial. The planet will not support both a large population and resource hungry individuals. One must be sacrificed. I'd rather have less people born living better than a lot in poverty and despair.

We can't just wish it away. All environments have a carrying capacity. Long before you hit it, life degrades precipitously. It is too late when you finally admit it.

The average income of the world is currently $7000 and dropping. Throughout most of history the most advanced people were the ones growing in population. That has reversed. We are gradually becoming a poorer planet.

You're not a plutocrat unless, when you get fired from your job, you walk away with millions in cash and stock options, or unless you receive million dollar and up year end bonuses that I helped pay for with my tax dollars.

If you're in neither of these categories, you're not a plutocrat, but if it flatters you to think of yourself that way, have it at, dude.

If we took all the cic cash bonuses that were paid to all the bankers who got fired and all the stock grants and added it up it would not amount to the income loss resulting from the president's demonizing Las Vegas and high end hotels. Not even close. You wouldn't get to use words like plutocrat but you would be well served to look at the very real negative impact loose presidential lips have had on lower level employees at resorts and LV. But that isn't part of the narrative is it?

bagoh20 said... I agree with Cederford that population is the real problem, but the only known way to fix that is by improving standards of living and human rights. The lowest birth rates are countries with these characteristics.

No, there are several methods, and the idea that prosperity and good food and medical care lowers population growth is not born out by the facts except in the Cultures of the natives of mature industrialized nations. The fertility rates of immigrants to those sanctified USAs and Swedens (Japan wisely does not have mass immigration) goes up.

As is the case in 3rd World nations that have religious imperatives to spawn or see rising prosperity as a signal to breed more (the ME today, Ireland in the 18th century as conditions and cheap food and medical care vastly improved.)

One other way we know works for sure is China's "one child policy" where for the good of the many - the "human right" to have as many kids as one wants and expect others to support them if they can't has been taken away.

People recoil at that "loss of a precious human freedom" created back in the day when whole continents were still largely unsettled, but even within America we may soon have to penalize excess breeding of the "welfare masses"..with something other than asserting that it is a problem but we cannot stop giving more welfare from America's endless wealth to a NOLA breeder woman who has 9 kids by 8 fathers because "it would punish the 9 kids". The limitless land and endless wealth arguments are exhausted.

**************Crack Emcee - what is Haiti right now but a Malthusian trap? 4th worlders breeding like crazy while they have largely destroyed the ecology of their once-lush land and half the arable landspaces. With the 10 million now having a piece of Haiti about 178feet by 178 feet for each.It is a Malthusian nightmare, spared a collapse like a lemming or rabbit population only because the rest of the world considers it a moral duty to sustain the Terri Schiavo of nations. Without such external help (which seems to keep people in abysmal poverty and only add to Haitian overpopulation - ) Haiti on it's own would naturally starve down to 2 million or so thugs and the people the thugs protected once the Western wheat and rice and chicken scraps stopped coming in.Nor does any nation really want the excess wretches from Haiti in the millions.Mass migration of the 3rd and 4th world to the advanced countries appears to not solve overpopulation or 3rd world culture but instead is slowly destroying advanced nations as the baneuls of France multiply and grow and as once-flourishing US Cities begin to resemble the dangerous dysfunctional squalor of Lagos or Hirare, Zimbabwe.

I agree with Cederford that population is the real problem, but the only known way to fix that is by improving standards of living and human rights. The lowest birth rates are countries with these characteristics.

Seriously, if population overcrowding becomes too much of a problem for us to handle, there will be either widespread famine, or some sort of disease like the plague to knock our population down.

Or maybe by then we’ll have figured how to live in smaller space without incident, or we’ll have colonized outerspace. Either way, driving a prius or “carbon credits” or any of this other nonsense is not going to make any difference.

The plutocrats stayed at the hotels where the workers worked until the populists railed against the use of high end hotels by recipients of TARP. The president, for good measure, threw in the negative comments about Las Vegas. All this was a year ago and neither the high end hotels or Las Vegas recovered. if the plutocrats had continued to spend their money at these places many poor employees would have kept their jobs. But since the lefties get their votes anyway I guess it doesn't matter does it?

The plutocrats were not the problem, the populist in chief was the problem.

I should have said that the only moral and effective way to limit population growth is prosperity and human rights. Human rights is very important, especially women's rights. Societies with women having relative equity to men do not have high birth rates. The properous societies you mention with high births involve comuniites where women are resigned to that purpose. Women with careers don't produce a lot of kids.

This is the only thing that will work. China's method will not be adopted anywhere else, nor do we want the government with that power. Make no mistake, the government will take over our choices if we do not get population under control. We will beg for it, as they fulfill their want to let no crisis be wasted.

My main points are:

1) Population is the central problem, because we can't give that many people a good life on this planet. 2) It is addressable with solutions that we already want anyway: prosperity and human rights. Basically: quality, not quantity of life.

I'm a nuclear engineer my very own self, and I'm not optimistic about the future of nuclear power in the US of A. My pals are, but not me.

People, in their heart, are never going to feel it is safe enough. That is why it is so easy for Obama to support safe and clean nuclear power. He knows it will never be accepted as safe enough or clean enough.

I've dealt with environmental activists my entire adult life. I've found them to be overwhelmingly Luddites. But that is just my experience. Doesn't really matter. If people are afraid, they are afraid. No amount of talking (I've tried; I was on the rubber chicken circuit.) or educating will make a difference.

Excuse me, I'm off to find some good discussions on last night's episode of Lost.

My experience with NewAgers is that they're, basically, empty people and, yea, controlling others is a way to validate themselves. Your question reminds me of two things:

1) In my ex's diary, she recounted how she took out all her NewAge books, pamphlets, shrunken heads, etc., and asked herself, "Why do I need all this crap?" From what I could tell, she didn't have a good answer.

2) The sheer joy she and her friends took in my distress over my marriage coming apart. Me - the guy who was semi-famous, respected, always together, and had an answer for everything - they saw I had *nothing* once I was totally blind-sided by a full-on assault of NewAge nonsense. And they LOVED it.

Bagoh,

"The problem with Malthusian was that he was born too early."

Dude, stop it: I've been all over this world and there's no over-population problem - there's a stupidity problem - but not too many people. We need more critical thinking - not fewer people.

Cedarford,

Study the history of Haiti and you find the bad guys are in Paris. How people, here, have become so enamoured with the frogs - that they'll overlook their long, long history of racism and general venelity - amazes me. The Haitians are surviving, which - under the conditions/situation they were, literally, born under - is an accomplishment that should be admired. As a foster child, I understand that: compared to those with a more conventional upbringing, I can appear to be a joke, but judged by the standards of my (unparented) peers, I'm a MAJOR success story. Sure, Haiti needs a lot of help (as do I) but, most definitely, not in lessons on resiliance (sp?). We've got that in spades.

The president, for good measure, threw in the negative comments about Las Vegas. All this was a year ago and neither the high end hotels or Las Vegas recovered."

Yes, um...what? You're saying persons have started staying away from Las Vegas in such droves as to hurt business there, causing the layoffs of hotel workers...because the President said something mean about the place? Are you freaking high?

Might not a drop off in business in a city whose chief business is devoted to taking money away from the people who visit there have just a tad bit to do with the fact that more people have less money to throw away than they did two, three and more years ago?

And since when did alcoholics and gamblers start taking their pointers on where to indulge their vices--and where not--from any fucking politician?

Take all these problems, keep the same level of resources and reduce the population by half. The result is that those problems that don't disappear, improve dramatically. Of course, I'm assuming that the vast reduction in population takes place among the same groups that are currently overpopulating, because that's the only place any future reduction can be morally accomplished. It is not intelligent nor morally possible to reduce population growth among those already at low rates. I'm suggesting preventing future growth, not eliminating anyone.

The reason this works is that if we reduce population in the future we do not lose resources including the non-material ones like technology, wisdom, culture.

The problem is illustrated on a microlevel by the Octo-mom. If you think it was a good thing for her to have 14 children, then we disagree on all of this and then you are probably ok with every mom having 14 and each of them in turn doing likewise. Why not?

After the president's comments last year on high end hotels and Las Vegas, all major public companies canceled their meetings at these facilities for fear of retaliation by the government. Resorts took the name "resort" off their letterheads. If you followed the financial news you might have known about this. Instead you suggest that I am high, or "freaking high" as you so nicely put it. If you knew anything about Wall Street or the plutocrats then you would know that their firms redlined upper end resorts and Las Vegas for travel and you would know that many many conventions were canceled and moved to safer venues even if more expensive. You, of course, could care less about the people hurt by Presidential showboating because you have the little people's vote anyway. Oh, and your remarks about LV indicate that you know absolutely nothing about its consumer base.

I hadn't paid much attention to this as it seemed perfectly appropriate for the President to criticize companies taking tax-payer dollars for scheduling expensive junkets to Las Vegas. Companies crying poor mouth and asking for help from the government, yet who would continue spending money to hold conferences in expensive LV resorts have no business doing so. Poor, poor corporate welfare babies.

"Retaliation from the government?"

Please.

A company not beholden to the taxpayers for continued liquidity is free as the breeze to yuk it up in Las Vegas; a company taking taxpayers' money has no business spending our money heedlessly.

Yes, it is terrible that wage-earning employees of the resorts lost their jobs; I worked in a hotel for a number of years and I know how hard people in the industry work. But their plight is hardly the fault of the President's appropriate criticism of profligate spending by insolvent companies kept alive by transfusions of tax dollars. And it simply provides an example of my point: those at the top are insulated from the bad results of their poor management or of an economy in free fall so long as there are legions of lower level wage earners who can be cut to make up company losses.

Cook, you do realize that the numerous and lavish junkets enjoyed by our representatives, a la Copenhagen, are funded by taxpayer money too. We get nothing back, no liquor, no fun , no sex, nadda. So he should deal with that.

Cook: I have never used language like this on this blog but I have to now. You don't have the slightest idea of what you are talking about.

I for one want all the bass boats and ski-doos and lake homes back from those swine borrowers who lied on their applications and used loan proceeds to fund their stupid lifestyles. And buy tattoos. I want them to go back paying rent instead of using my tax dollars to support "their" homes on which they have an option. I want the President to rail against those lowlifes.

Here are a few stories that deal with the so-called "AIG effect" on the hotel industry. By the way, the AIG event that got all the poor people up in arms was what is known as an incentive trip: ie the people on the trip earned it by selling a certain amount of product.

You share something with our president that the mayor of Las Vegas pointed out; he said Obama was a slow learner.

"Cook, you do realize that the numerous and lavish junkets enjoyed by our representatives, a la Copenhagen, are funded by taxpayer money too. We get nothing back, no liquor, no fun , no sex, nadda. So he should deal with that."

Who says I'm happy with that? As far as I'm concerned, most of those sitting in office in Washington right now are crooks and should be run out of town.